Corpse

Version 0.14: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

Corpses may be left behind when you kill monsters. Once created, they eventually become rotten after enough time passes. Eventually, they rot away completely, occasionally leaving behind a skeleton, which rots away even later. Corpses have a variety of uses, depending on your species, religion, and even background.

Uses

• Corpses can be butchered (command c) into edible chunks of raw flesh. This process takes 5 turns, during which enemies may attack you, though you'll be asked if you want to stop butchering when an enemy is spotted. Any butchering progress you made toward the 5 turns before your cancellation will remain. Characters do not need to carry an edged weapon for this, as they are assumed to carry a boot knife for this purpose. You will only be unable to butcher a corpse when in Fungus Form or Wisp Form.
  • Vampires can instead "eat" (that is, drain) corpses without needing to butcher them first.
  • Butchered (or drained) corpses may leave behind skeletons.
  • Butchering the corpses of trolls and dragons may also leave behind hides, which can be enchanted into powerful body armour.
• You can sacrifice corpses to certain gods for piety by standing over them and praying (command p). Note that this only works for gods who accept blood sacrifice, and (except for Nemelex) only fresh corpses are acceptable. Rotting corpses, skeletons, and chunks cannot be sacrificed. Sacrificed corpses are annihilated, leaving nothing for other purposes.
• Followers of Fedhas Madash may pray to sprout toadstools from all corpses in their LoS (leaving behind any skeletons), which grants piety for "contributing to the ecosystem". Advanced Fedhas worshipers can upgrade these toadstools into useful servants. They may also use the corpses to create giant spores.
• Corpses and skeletons can be reanimated into undead servants through Necromancy or the invocations of Yredelemnul. Various other necromantic spells also use corpses as raw material. Notably, the spell Animate Skeleton not only works on whole corpses (if they're a species with a skeleton), but leaves the meat behind.

Unlike treasure, corpses are never generated randomly on the Dungeon floor. Thus, finding a corpse that you didn't kill may indicate the presence of a trap or a vault. The corpse of any unique monster you kill will retain the name. Butchering it will only create generic chunks, but any hides produced will retain the name of the unique. These named hides will not have any special powers, however.

Types of Meat

Butchery is the most common use for corpses, but not all creatures are equally edible to every species. For example, hill orcs are less picky about their diet than humans, while trolls and especially ghouls are much less picky. By the same token, not all monsters leave clean meat. Some produce chunks that are poisonous, contaminated, or so vile that they are only fit for ghouls.

The "Meat" rating on a monster's page indicates what kind of corpse it leaves:

• No Corpse: The monster leaves no corpse (e.g., giant spores, zombies, summoned beings)
• Clean: These chunks can be eaten without risk (e.g., most animals)
• Contaminated: These chunks can also be eaten without risk, but they are less nutritive.
• Poisonous: These chunks cannot be eaten without poison resistance (e.g., kobolds, many insects)
• Contaminated+Poisonous: Some monsters, such as scorpions, have meat which is both poisonous and contaminated. Such meat will be reported and behave as poisonous unless you have poison resistance, in which case it will be simply contaminated.
• Rot-inducing (formerly "HCL/Hydrochloric acid"): These chunks can only be eaten by ghouls.
• Mutagenic: These chunks will cause random mutations (or bad mutations if the corpse/chunks are rotten) (e.g., ugly things, giant orange brains)
• Corpses (and chunks) of all types also become rotten if they are old enough. Rotten chunks are especially wholesome to ghouls, but are inedible to species without the Saprovore trait. Like corpses, rotten chunks eventually vanish altogether.

Luckily, a corpse's (or chunk's) description will always describe what type of meat it is. Furthermore, they are color coded as described on the Food page.

History

• Prior to 0.14, players could not butcher corpses while in Spider Form, Pig Form, or Porcupine Form.
• Prior to 0.13 contaminated chunks could cause nausea or sickness in non-Ghouls.
• Prior to 0.12 the player character was unable to butcher corpses with cursed blunt weapons. Corpses sprouted toadstools even when the player was not a worshiper of Fedhas.
• The presumed boot knife for butchering was added in 0.9. In earlier versions, you needed to carry an edged weapon to butcher.
• Contaminated+Poisonous corpses were added in 0.8.